!

It is my belief (rapidly realized in a ten-minute shower) that "refreshing" is a nicely woven trap. I say trap, because its difficult to stay there, contrary to trap being used to describe something that is difficult to get out of. Well, maybe. You see, refreshing sounds good. Unique, original, never-before-seen, why did it take so long to find you, I can't place you in any of my categories, what an individual you are. But where can you go from there? You either become increasingly less refreshing, which is most likely the case, and become the person who was once refreshing that is now closer to mundane. Your charm erodes. You morph into run-of-the-mill. On the other hand. You could also easily become "weird", due to, I don't know, the fact that you're difficult to figure out. You're too different. You're unwilling to conform. You seem to the other person as if you're trying too hard to remain separate from the norm.

Neither ends of the spectrum seem to be great prospects. I stood in the shower ruminating over the word "refreshing," and puzzled by the dismal picture the word suggested in its future. What is it, a foreboding? I had an apprehensive feeling, that may or may not have been an overreaction. Or maybe I'm flattering myself. I guess I often flatter myself. Fine.

I took a day off today from work and worrying and panicking about work and sat on a bench under nice daylight and just read. I hadn't done that in a while; I felt the need to retrace my steps. Then I came home and feasted on noodles, then some strawberries, then some television, and now writing. Tomorrow begins work again. Boy do I need this year to end now.

Guichanaso.

The daze after school year is hard to wear off. It's a pleasant sort of disruption. No more patterns. No more "tomorrow's readings" to do everyday. You're free, the weather is great, go, go and do things! And usually if there aren't any plans (which would usually also just daze you out, and is sort of a pleasant disruption), this just becomes waking up at 1PM, doing absolutely nothing for a while, and not being able to think what you should do. As my friend said on a phone call with his mother: "Mom. I'm being intentionally negligent. I haven't been for so long, and for these few days, I have decided that I will be negligent about things. I will take care of these things in few days."

But working and running on schedule are my natural state. Not a workaholic, quite relaxed, but I'm too young to just sit back and relax. The energy is priceless. Ticklish. It was enough of beautiful campus of the College I love, running across random beloved people. Tomorrow, freshening up.

You know that you're tired when you just lie on the bed for no reason, close your eyes without falling asleep, think about billion stupid things, then think, "I've been just lying down there for a while," just to immediately forget what i was thinking about. It's like, your brain shrank and there's only space for no thoughts at all. Squeezing in a wise thought into that space and deciding to sleep.


Mothagesso.

Ah Fuck Digital Art and Haughty Artists

Sad kudos to me for trying, but I guess I'm just terrible with video. Wompity womp womp.

Guichanaso.

Today at 6PM,

I thought to myself, wow, Vimeo sucks. Cover letters suck. Youtube, I love you.

I've had no currency for the last two weeks and somehow survived without it. We're capable of so much with so little. I don't know why it took an extended state of absolutely nothing for me to realize that. I can hardly wait for June 1st so that I can be dumb and financially irresponsible again. I like using lots of adjectives. Is "lots" an adjective? I use that a lot.

Today is cold. When I go in the sunlight, it's warm, but barely, never to a satisfying degree, never to a level of satiation, kind of like a tease, like a taste-tester, as if to stand over me and look down at my un-tall figure in scorn, you can never get under my skin. You win.

Guichanaso.

May 22nd at 6PM

I have long stopped searching for music regularly. No music blogs, reviews, websites-- YouTube made things easier, and I don't even do that all that often. I'm not even signed up for Spotify. But YouTube exploring Boys Noize right now. Also, trying to buy a hat and a t-shirt from Boys Noize website, and it's basically $30 each. Is this worth it? I know where all this buying has led me to with my hoarding tendencies.


Mothagesso.

One of my favorite linguistic stylistic choice is to use a vulgar and expressive term as a prefix or suffix to an eloquent and grandiose phrases and words. A swift deployment of "You myopic fuck" would be an example.

"Nearsightedness" is a weird looking word.

Explicable, but irresolvable tensions suck. Some of these tensions receded throughout time, and that experience is the only thing that sort of keeps things in perspective, and in clarity. An example from the past is about partying. I wanted to go out, hang out, party, and be the 'cool kid.' Most of my life consisted in such misdirected and aimless pursuit of what I didn't really know what it looked like. To be funny, talkative, attention-grabbing, beloved by people, articulate, well-dressed (this just resulted in incoherent set of un-cross-matchable clothes), mature, relaxed- whatever that 'cool' seemed to be for people to give me attention, and whatever that 'cool' I could do, I did. I was a slave to my own disposition; I partied even if I did not really want to. I went out just for the sake of going out. I pretended to be cool, so I cant be cool. Coolness still is one of my primary motivation. However, it does not simply dictate me as much as it used to. I feel comfortable staying in and having a cup of hot chocolate. I do not consider the great load of fun happening out there as much as I did. When I do, I don't feel that unsettling desire to just go out just to go out and, and, do something cool. That never really worked out.

One of these tensions these days would be my deep-inside jealousy for people with prestigious brand names on their résumé. I know the mischievous effects of those names. On one hand, I know that those few words are childishly too dumb to really mean anything when describing a person. Some people are there without desiring for any of its socializing effects. They truly and by that I mean, simply and solely, enjoy their time, and they are genuine. And more frequently than not, turn out to be interesting quirky dorks whom I found either interesting and amiable, or just, not-my-type. No fun to hang out with, as hanging out is one of my major measure of interpersonal fit, as well as my favorite hobby. That's what matters, really. Enjoying a company is what I will want, and need, and will benefit from. On the other hand, I also am just jealous about such names. It comes with psychological and social burden, I know. Some people just cannot behave freely about it. They just embody the entire snobbishness, regardless they like it or not. People feed it to them. The world does. Sometimes, more problematically, people embrace the fact that they are there. Explicable, but irresolvable tension. Knowing that a social construct exists do not free me from the construct itself.

Suspension bridges are dope.

On a tangential note, that does not mean that I should be free from every amour propre, every vanity, every tension, or every social construct. To hate everything 2012, as a cutting-edge, right-er than anyone, forefront liberal warrior, is not the answer to live in 2012. You cannot despise everything 2012 because you are from 2067. Your despising does not help expedite the coming of 2067, nor make 2067 look any better, at any rate. Know the age you live in, know the social constructs we deal with. Converse with it. Do not resolve the tension by ending up at an extreme end where rationality seems to speak the one and only truth. Your future might very well come, but haste rarely is advisable for your personal richness.

I have always been bad at preaching. I enjoy doing it, or at least, I cannot help myself from doing it once I start, and I just stop considering my audience and the content of what I am saying, even. And it always do not seem to accomplish things that I willed, at any rate. I still do preach, and I still do write as such.

It's all just me being a little selfish, trying to find the way out, the end, to just figure out what I am doing in the middle of the fog. "We know the reality, the real things we should do, but we really don't, not yet. And at the same time, we are trying to weigh that against what we really want, but we're still in the process of figuring that out as well. Holding the two in our hands, let alone aligning the two"-- proves to be extremely difficult.

I know that the bridge is stable, and that I will be fine in any case. In the meantime, I find myself lucky to be a fond lover of humid fog. I'm in some sort of relaxed nirvana, bitch.


Mothagesso.

Horrible

Sometimes I try to upset a person just to see them upset, because I'm often upset and I want to be upset together. It also just occurred to me that one day, I will raise children.

Guichanaso.

Green

Guichanaso.

May 18th at 6PM,

I thought to myself, I like mess! Mess is comfy. Mess is inviting. Mess is natural.

This was what I got when I googled "messy."

However. Mess when trying to compose a resume and a coverletter and an application for a widely coveted position is not good. Mess, when applying for a summer school program, is a distraction. Mess is unhelpful. It's also domineering, stubborn, unruly, and infectious. 

Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. The rents are flying in next weekend. Hide all the evidence! Hide the candy, the unwashed towels, the socks already hidden under the bedpost! Hide them deeper! Which reminds me, I have to vacuum. Fuuudge. That machine terrifies me. It stands in the corner of my room and stares at me as if to judge, you disgusting mess. I could clean you up in a second. I moved it behind my trash can.You deserve to be in my dust bin, it told me.

Get done today:

Paper Application

Summer application

Resume

Plane ticket

Portfolio

Get started on art project (oh my)

Guichanaso.

Today at 6PM,

I was taking a nap. I thought to myself, this is nice. It was nice.
Then at 6:30 I woke up and it was all horrible again.

Guichanaso.

MORUMORUM IS NOW MORUMORUM.US

BLOGSPOT DOES NOT OWN US ANYMORE (well kind of but indirectly. merely a mediator.) It is now 2:38 in the morning and I am going insane with this video project. I can't hear my sources. I can't tell if their names are Francesco or Frederick. Fruck!

Guichanaso. 


Check out my other blog, http://soulsofchicago.tumblr.com/

Totally getting a domain for that one as well. I own (a portion of) the (internet) world!

The first song I remember listening to and thinking, I like that song.

Guichanaso.

I always rediscover my love for my college. Perhaps just become aware of it, or maybe it's more like recreating it. It flows from the springs of awareness, and it tingles, the constant realization of it, having those glasses on through which everything is just about great. The nice weather that calls you outside, and the young green leaves and grasses that rejoice in life help tickle this happiness.

I went to see the final music composition concert of a good friend who is graduating this year. The experimentation, investigation, decisions in such one piece were all fascinating. The presence of good people, good friends is always heartening. In the explication and description of his work, he wrote:

"...a peaceful setting without sharp edges, one that flows out of itself."

I thought that I would like to become closer to that phrase.


Mothagesso.

I HAVE NO ARTSY FRIENDS WHO'LL GO TO A MUSEUM WITH ME?!

Wishing for something you don't have is a beautiful activity. Wishing for something you can't have is a little different.

Air is good. A friend of mine brought over a glass bottle with M&M's, and I've grown fond of refilling it with M&M's so I could eat M&M's out of the bottle whenever I wanted. It's a great aesthetic tool, not to mention a bit of an entertainment, thrown into what used to be a blase experience: eating colored chocolate. But it's silly because I filled the bottle with peanut M&M's as well and I hate peanuts. I think I got it for substance. Because they're fatter. They fill up the void. So it'd seem as if I had more to choose from, although if I shook the bottle and got a peanut M&M, I'd put it right back in the bottle and shake until I got a normal one. The bottle is now predominantly peanut. Gas is bad.

Let it go, Petty. Win some, lose some.

Guichanaso.

Google image search reflects on a moment.

Mothagesso.

Here's a weird daydreamy thoughts. The world is chaotic, as in, lacks pattern and is disorganized to the extent of being fearsome. There are just incommensurable amount of things, things that make logical sense, things that make no sense to us, things concrete and abstract. It's just too much for anyone to handle. They aren't even dichotomies as I try to capture them, because there are so many dichotomies, then ones that do not get captures by dichotomies. It's dichotomy + 1. Always pattern + exceptions. No pattern. Too much.

The human quality that keeps us from mentally falling apart is our epistemological failure, limit, moderation, protection, however you want to see it. We are allowed to see and understand, but also to forget, ignore, be jaded, and stay ignorant and blind. Phew.

But we can see them, if we want to. We can try to hold everything in our hands if we want to. To hold the tension in our hand, to hold pieces of infinity in our brains. Isn't this scary?

Fear is a very human perception. The world most likely just is. But because it seems to move in certain calculable ways, but with exceptions, they maybe intention-less, but also inherently chaotic. That is its quality. And because we can observe such quality, and opt to constantly push ourselves to observe these qualities-- and finally are capable of feeling fear, world can be a fearful place to some daydreamers. It isn't too me. For just the same thing, it's just annoyingly fascinating, but not fearsome.

But to some, it is fearsome. And then I decided to imagine a possible individual, who wants simplicity in the world, and decides to destroy everything. Raze everything down to dust. He does this regardless of the fact that he knows that his mind will not be simplified, and that destruction will not eventually settle his agony. The agony is in his mind, so it will stay so. Destruction is the fiction of accomplishment, a false sense of reaching the goal, an addiction you can indulge yourself with.

I wonder if I was socialized with the idea of finiteness, completion, and end.

Inconsequential imaginations.


Mothagesso.

I went to the photography seminar exhibition today. A familiar space, modest exhibition, but the works were fascinating enough to suck all your attention and tickle your minds with interpretations and inspirations. The works were refined, less amateur, more mature, but also raw, out of pure curiosity, interest, and that inexperience, innocence, foolhardiness. What is captured are the unsettling moments between the transitory and exploratory period from an amateur student to becoming a professional.

It's like eating a half-fried egg on a pan.

Walking back home, my eyes were inclined to see pretty things, or see things prettily. Aftereffects of an art. I find much beauty in time-sensitive moments: when the sunset hits the buildings for five minutes, when the buds are growing out of the trees, and when the rain is barely . There's nothing to be translated. There's no content, messages or feelings. There's just awe. There's just desire to have it, the sadness of letting such desire go. I wish it was just pure awe for the moment. That's the best I can do.

Recently I find myself not even trying to deal with my obsession, appreciation. I don't take take photos of everything. "I'll do it later. I'll take out a day when I take photo of all these things I notice." But when will I? It's like, I don't even try to treat my illness. By ignoring the pain, I only get it worse. By refusing to struggle to see, I will just go blind.

Labor, my friend said. Labor gives fruit to all beauty. All beauty requires labor. Not all seeds bud.

Ah, jungmal
Mothagesso.

It's unusually foggy outside.

Racism still pervades the campus. Egg-throwing, and "Fuck Asians." What a clever, original line.

Dad was egged once while jogging. Was it 2009. Kids on a motorcycle drove by and threw eggs at him. Dad'd been minding his own business. People do things for nonsensical reasons without thinking about how those they're harming belong to a family. It broke my heart. It didn't break their hearts, just their eggs.

Dad came home drenched in yolk. He showered, put on a suit, and went to work that day.

For more information regarding these Eggs

Guichanaso.

 Diana's Bow - Curt Renz

I used to think that it takes insanity to leave your name in history. In present colloquial terms, you first of all have to be that geek who actually enjoys working more than hanging out, reading more than playing video games. Then you have to be a little crazy, consumed by the subject matter totally and therefore probably narrowly understanding the world and oneself, as well as struggling in other aspects of life, such as friendship or marriage. Like, genius is just a tragedy. A freak accident that eventually helped humanity and the world. A victim of oneself, who we laud and exploit.

I wanted to leave my name in history. It was a sort of ambition that drives one to be productive. But it was mostly a shallow and superficial desire for fame without understanding what it would really take and realizing that I probably never will. A gross miscalculation, but it did let me see a little further than 'right now,' and more 'wouldn't it be cool if...?' It was better than to be a philistine hedonist who might go: "well, I'm having fun right now and that's all there is." It allowed me to dream about lofty things. But time passed. Philistine hedonism was avoided but philistine idealism's bubble was popped, and I told my friend one day:

"I don't think I'll be something famous or anything. And I'm fine with that. I just want to be a happy person who makes people around me happy, and that would be what I ultimately want, I think."

He said back, "I think you can be famous whatever point in life."

Good point. I guess there's a lot of personalities who shone later in their lives.

Life just seems to get more real I know it, and I keep lowering, lowering, loweringas I get to know more and more. It's like what Machiavelli did with political philosophy, but just much less triumphantly. Knowing the world a little better, have I too readily succumb my life to the world? Then how do I exactly get revitalized, and infuse insanity back into my brain and life? This is not just some idealism or entrepreneurship I want to reclaim. It's not just a vision I wish to pursue, but getting a whole new pair of glasses. Change the mode of thought and gear it towards creativity and awe. And for the first time, to match it with labor. Reclaim what seems to be lost. Reforge it with what seems to be right. Theory makes sense, reality is always much less clear.

I just don't want to lose direction at the cost of speed. I just want Diana and Armstrong to be together on my Moon.


Mothagesso.

Thought vomit

Please care less!
Please care less!
Please care less!

Fiction professor gave a new sketch topic, and it mandates 1) a character 2) a setting, and 3) no flashbacks. Worst. Should not have gone to office hours to talk about what I hate most about story writing. Also,

Missed Thursday's journalism lecture. New assignment is out. Can't figure out due date nor the assignment. Memo due monday. Group wants it done by sunday. Grrrreat. Assignments entail video, which means travelling down to Edgewater. I hate texting classmates asking about "what I missed." Should have gone to lecture. Was sick that morning, but maybe I just wanted to be sick. Or maybe the prospect of going to lecture made me sick. Caught me at a vulnerable moment? You never know..

David brought up this blog over dinner last night where there were a group of five or so friends. It felt super weird having it brought up in real life. I forgot this existed for other people too. I equated it with my room, "group categorized" is more like it, and not many people know about my room, so I guess I assumed the same for this. Then I called Michael to talk about how weird it was that other people were reading, to which he concurred, but Stephen reminded me: "You did post it on Facebook." I did.

Facebook is the root of all that must be yanked. But because I cannot yank, I will slowly tug.

Guichanaso.

Fuck you.

Guichanaso

To doubt your athletic abilities in a sincere way.

Mothagesso.

What does it mean to be a friend?

Guichanaso.

Friends doubting my athletic abilities.

"If I threw you a ball, would you be able to catch it?"

Guichanaso.

"In need of a time out"

I think I tend to relay responsibility onto others. Oftentimes I find myself describing events as if they somehow happened to stumble into my life, instead of me getting myself into them. It shows in my syntax, as well. I'd say "I've come to see" or "I found myself" a lot in situations where I could easily just say "This happened." Let's be more accurate, I made this happen.

In a single quarter at Northwestern students usually take four classes. As did I, come registration time--I enrolled myself in American government, Fiction, Journalism 301, and Art. Digital art. I told myself, I'm going to have fun this spring. And soon spring quarter bloomed and I was lazier than I had ever been. I found immeasurable joy in dragging myself out of bed at a snail's pace, crawling into the shower, standing vertical (eyes closed) under 30 minutes' worth of hot water, coming back to the room only to worm back into bed, wet body will dry in time, taking time to put on a movie even though the movie is muted with sounds of hair drying, choosing the right perfume, contemplating which shoes to put on, and arriving 20 minutes late to a 1PM class. Never went to a single government lecture, and then, boom, it was just the three. American government never even had a chance.

I'm not American so it's okay. I persuaded myself.

But here I am at an institution my parents pay 50 grand each year for and I'm struggling to keep up minuscule work for a mere three. For fiction, you just had to write a few sketches. For art, you just had to show up. For journalism, there was definite work involved, but you applied to be a journalism student. If you set yourself up for it, you can't complain, said a voice inside my head. So I did. I said,

Too early. But you've already dropped one, now you have to do well on the others. I can't get out of bed today. They will understand, they were college students, too, just like me. 

It's disheartening to find myself unable to manage an already compromised state.


Guichanaso.